Consumers in the UAE are very optimistic in their attitudes towards the economy, a survey conducted by an international credit card firm said.

According to the latest MasterCard Worldwide IndexTM of Consumer Confidence released on Thursday, consumers in the UAE scored 86.0 points, the highest level since 2009. They expressed their optimism about economy (89.1), employment (88.9), regular income (86.2), stock market (77.0) and quality of Life (88.6).

Egypt’s auto retail sector, one of the largest in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, has been hit hard by dwindling sales due to the recent political instability and economic slowdown, but pent-up demand is shoring up recovery, the Oxford Business Group said in its report on Thursday.

Quoting local press sources, the report said that overall vehicle sales were up 4.4% year-on-year in May. According to the Automotive Marketing Information Council (AMIC), two-thirds of the 15,465 units sold were passenger cars. The council also said that pick up of commercial vehicles’s sales, especially that of trucks and buses, was the key growth driver. Bus sales were up 30.7% to 1358 units and truck sales rose 29.6% to 3340 units. The report said it will have a multiplier effect on the manufacturing sector, which is also coming out of the shadows.

A Chinese think tank has said Arab uprisings that started in January last year across North African countries has had a limited impact on China-Africa trade.

The annual report on African development released by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in early July said China-Africa trade volume in 2011 reached a historic high of $166.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of more than 30%.

Countries like Sudan, Egypt, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia also registered a rapid growth in trade with China. Libya was the only exception in the region, the report noted.

Saudi Arabia’s population is the third most slothful in the world, new research has found, with 68.8% of adults failing to do enough physical exercise to keep themselves healthy.

Only in Malta and Swaziland do adults exert themselves less than Saudi Arabia, and women in the Gulf state are the world’s least inactive females, according to data published in the Lancet medical journal.

Kuwait and the UAE also rank in the top ten with 64.5% and 62.5% of adults respectively not meeting the recommended level of activity.

Saudi Arabia’s push toward an open skies policy is attracting the interest of major airlines in the Gulf and raising hopes that poor service and overbooked flights that have characterized air travel across the country could soon be a thing of the past.

More than 54 million passengers passed through Saudi Arabia’s 27 airports last year, according to data from the General Authority for Civil Aviation, rising 13.6 percent from 2010.

But the kingdom, the biggest Arab economy and the largest country in the Gulf geographically, still has one of the smallest airline networks in the region relative to its size.

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